Music Directors And Composers In British Cinema Of The 1930s: The Creative Process And Working Musical Relationships

British film music in the 1930s might be defined by its variety. Unlike its Hollywood counterpart, there was no fully developed 'production line' as an alternative to creating film scores. Nevertheless, most studios had a musical director, who was responsible for the brokering of composer deals and seeing a project to completion. This paper aims at examining a few individuals working in Britain at the time, such as Muir Mathieson, Arthur Bliss and Mischa Spoliansky, and revealing some of the diplomacy that had to be negotiated to produce some of the major scores of the period. I ask to what extent MDs actually engineered the stylistic direction of the music.